


colors must fit together as pieces in a puzzle (or cogs in a wheel)

by gaykaradanvers



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Synesthesia, tropes out the Ass
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-10-24 21:17:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10750002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaykaradanvers/pseuds/gaykaradanvers
Summary: (“Hey,” Kara said, gently wrapping her fingers around her friend’s wrists, and Lena had stopped in her tracks, looked downright startled. “You deserve everything,” she continued reverently, cradling Lena’s pulse with her thumb as a reminder.“I promise,” Kara added as an afterthought, “if you ever forget that, I’m here. I’ll protect you, okay?”)the one where kara sees emotions in color and lena makes her feel everything.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is a gay mess but so are lena and kara, so it's okay.
> 
> un beta'd, all mistakes are mine because i'm too lazy to read this all over again.

 

Kara thought in dynamic color for as long as she could remember. Memories of her mother’s voice as it cooed her to sleep as a child were associated with blue, vibrant and not unlike the tint of Alura’s eyes. A cloying blanket of the sky as it settles its warmth over her shoulders. The impression of her father’s hands against her back as he hoisted her up and spun her around were yellow, a calm wash of sunshine weaving into the net of Kara’s nerves and tangling into her form, comfy.

 

(The hills of her thoughts are rolling and endless, cascading into an array of rainbows, a different shade for every feeling and person. Everyone’s distinct, having their own tone tucked away within the recesses of her brain that she associates them with.

 

She’s young – too young to _really_ know – but the imprint of art is already left on her soul, the ghost of its fingers there, at her very heart, even so early on in life. It’s always lingering, Kara thinks. Her mother told her she had a gift. _“So_ special _,” Alura had said, leaning over her, a gradual susurration as she ran her fingers over the sunset Kara had drawn_.)

 

Their passing is red, fire and fire, and more fire. Scarlet waves of heat scorching the kitchen, the curtains and tearing through the house, turning everything into slate cinders, into remnants of her childhood. 

 

After that, she thinks in black and white. The shades of her mind are quiet, seldom making appearance. Emotions are grey even as the world continues to tilt in color, sadness the only thing making impressions within the silence, dark and all consuming.

 

Kara’s freshly adopted, in a new home with new people and mourning her parents. Her family. Clark’s too busy to care for her. With what little understanding Kara’s garnered over her whole, ten years of living, she knows she doesn’t want to be the reason he can’t properly pursue his dream and life. A kid’s a lot of responsibility, she gets that, knows it in her bones. It’s why she waves him off with a smile when he drops her off at the Danvers’, as much of one she can muster, anyway.

 

They’re good people, nice and honest. They take Kara beneath their wings in almost no time at all. Jeremiah grins with all his teeth, Eliza hugs her for all she’s worth, and Kara never once doubts their commitment, but that doesn’t make it any easier. She’s parentless, readjusting to the reality that she’ll never be able to smile at her dad over the two foot tall stack of pancakes her mom almost burnt. That she’ll never see them again, or be held in her father’s arms while her mother strokes her hair.

 

(Kara envisions the blaze when she closes her eyes – their screams of pain, pleading for her safety – she sees the gas leak, the oven left on. Sees the good her parents built dissolving into thick ash underneath the weight of the flames.)

 

Not everything is _good_ , though. The Danvers’ home feels too big, and Alex is as cold to her as Kara felt after all the realizations sunk in when she was at the police station, Clark holding her until she could just stop sobbing. If not for the monochromatic scale her brain was stuck in, she believes Alex’s icy shoulder would make her think of indigo, the Persian shade, an inky blot of space that makes you feel alone and sorrowful. But there’s nothing, just clouds, charcoal and winding around her cognition.

 

“She’ll warm up to you eventually,” Jeremiah says as he tucks her in. His hands are too rough, very unlike her own father’s, and it’s not the same. It’s not the same. “I swear it.”

 

She believes him, truly. The eyes looking into her sad, ocean ones are filled with as much sincerity as they can be, and Kara melts under them. Holds onto the promise of Alex’s eventual companionship like a lifeline. It’ll happen, soon, just not now.

 

* * *

 

 

Fourth grade’s daunting enough when you’re not a fresh face entering in the middle of the year. When all eyes aren’t on you, all whispers aren’t about you and the rumors surrounding your sudden appearance. Fourth grade is tough, but Kara’s tougher. Beneath her timid nature and quiet stutters, she has thick skin. It’s the way she was raised, and Kara will die before she doesn’t make her parents proud, if they’re out there still, watching from the sky.

 

She doesn’t get teased, necessarily. It could be much worse than kids skittering away when she enters the lunch room, scooting to other ends of the tables as if Kara needs all that room to breathe. They leave her alone, which hurts, but at least she isn’t Lena Luthor.

 

It happens, or rather when Kara first sees it, on the playground during recess her second week of being at this new school.

 

An overcast of clouds begs promise of a thunderstorm, looming and dark against the sky. It’s a wonder they’re even allowed outside today, actually. Though Kara just makes her way to a bench a few feet away from the swing sets, one that’s steadily becoming her home, pack of Oreos in hand that Eliza had given her earlier that morning. She watches the foreground with wandering eyes, never staying in one spot too long.

 

That is, until she sees heady, ebony hair spewing from a ponytail holder like a waterfall. She isn’t inescapably mesmerized, not exactly. Far too young for a fluttering feeling to poke at her rib cage, Kara merely finds the sight pretty, in a fond way she may’ve admired a flower or something of the sort. It whips underneath the effort of the wind, to and fro, and she watches.

 

The sight’s nice, oddly calming in a way Kara doesn’t bother trying to explain. If she did, though, she’d have to say it reminds her of a park close to her old home. A park her parents took her, a park where she’d see ravens flap their wings while her mother tossed out bread and she’d sat atop her father’s shoulders.

 

(There’s a brief spark of color before it vanishes, and Kara tries to grasp at it like a straw. It was – maybe – deep purple, fluttering wings, strands of hair, but it’s gone long before it’s ever really _there_.)

 

Warmth at the memory lasts all but one minute, a flurry of motion causing a stir in front of her that Kara almost misses when she’s lost in thought. It’s two boys that she recognizes from her class. They walk over to the girl with the beautiful hair and tug at her ponytail, saying words that are surely harsh, given the look on her face, but that she can’t hear.

 

Hands on hips, Kara stalks over to the scene. In hopes of doing what, she isn’t certain.

 

“Hey,” she calls, one of the boys – Oswald Cobblepot, Kara thinks, with scruffy, black hair and a mean smirk – drops his hand from the girl to face her.

 

“What do you want?” Cobblepot baits, brandishing that mean smirk like it’s a weapon. Luckily, Kara doesn’t bite, only looks over to the other kid who still has a hold on the girl’s shoulder.

 

“Let her go.”

 

The boy she doesn’t have a name for, too many people in her class to remember them all, isn’t smiling and definitely doesn’t move his fingers from being interwoven in her shirt.

 

“Seems like Little Luthor has a friend,” he taunts, and the girl – Luthor… _something_ – closes her eyes as if she’s waiting for a backlash. Like she might be disgusted at the idea of her being a friend. Kara, almost instantly, hates these kids for making her feel like that.

 

“Y-yeah, she does. So why don’t you two leave her alone and go pick on someone your own size?” The girl’s smile is reward enough, quivering and small, as if she barely can believe someone’s standing up for her.

 

“Come on, Edward,” Oswald scoffs, tugging at his friend’s hand and looking over Kara’s shoulder.

 

Her bravado bolsters as they bound away, the bulbs on their light up sneakers flickering into the distance; Kara smiles, reaching a hand out to the girl, but she’s only staring behind her, just like the boys were.

 

Faltering, she glances back in the direction where Luthor’s line of sight is and notices her teacher. Well, so much for saving the day. Kara deflates in an instant.

 

“Oh,” she murmurs softly, arm dropping back to the side as her foot toes softly at the mulch on the ground. The teacher, Ms. Prince, kneels down on eye level with Kara, as if she’s trying to project the idea that their equals. Kara was fond of her the very moment she stepped into class on her first day. She vaguely thinks Diana reminds her of certain shades of blue, like spangled stars, but they never form all the way through the grief, indistinct and foggy.

 

(Kara misses color and their meanings. She misses the varying shades and figuring out the endless names of them all. Like Alex’s companionship, she thinks, they’ll come back one day, just not now. Not soon enough.)

 

“You did a good thing, Kara – sticking up for Lena here like that – it was _very_ brave of you.” Ms. Prince sets a reassuring hand on her shoulder, and while Kara used to be so tactile, she can’t help but lessen under the touch, familiar and not, and just so, so sad.

 

Diana is intuitive for an elementary school teacher, drops her hand and worries her brow as she gazes passed Kara to the other girl, Lena. They aren’t in the same class, in the same year, yes, but never really in the same room. Kara kind of wishes they were, it’d be nice to have someone to be in solidarity with against bullies.

 

“Are you alright?” She says to her, and Kara turns just in time to see Lena nod absently, now staring at her feet in the presence of Ms. Prince. The woman retakes her standing position as the bell rings, signifying the end of their recess. Stepping a foot or so back, she smiles down onto them and jerks her head in the direction of class.

 

“Time to head back in,” she says, turning away and walking a few steps ahead before glancing back over her shoulder one last time. “And Lena, don’t worry, I’ll talk to Cobblepot and Nygma’s parents by the end of the day. They won’t be bothering you anymore.”

 

With that, she’s gone, disappearing into the sea of children and adults alike, ruefully rushing back inside to do more learning.

 

Kara doesn’t realize she isn’t the only one watching Ms. Prince’s retreating form until there’s a cough, gentle behind her, and swivels on her heels back to look at Lena.

 

She’s shyly glancing around with wide eyes, different from the way Kara would, but reserved all the same. Kara thinks that, maybe, she shouldn’t be beaming as big as she is, so she tries to tamp it down by pushing her glasses up her nose and waving a hand over to Lena.

 

Fourth graders shake hands like adults, right?

 

“Um,” Lena mutters, staring at Kara’s outstretched hand like it’s some foreign object. _Apparently not_. 

 

“Sorry,” she laughs, awkwardly retracting her arm and rubbing at the back of her neck. “That was kind of weird, huh?”

 

To Kara’s surprise, Lena shakes her head, somehow finding it all funny, too, as she tilts a little forward with a titter, grinning. “Not really, I just – you – why are you being nice to me?”

 

Kara only smiles. “Why wouldn’t I?”

 

* * *

 

From then on, she and Lena sit with each other during recess, even during lunch, sometimes. They barely speak, Lena still withdrawing from her shell and Kara’s loss still prevalent, meandering beneath every thought she has.

 

It’s just nice, _simple_. The quiet had never really felt so comfortable.

 

Slowly, Kara’s mind begins to breathe in color again.

 

(They’re still faded, muggy and faint under the billows of desolation, but life continues on. Each day gets brighter, and it’s no secret who shines a light on the hues of Kara’s color pinwheel.)

 

* * *

 

Over the next few weeks, Kara and Lena fall into a routine. Their agreement remains unspoken, for the most part. Lena saves two spots on the bench closest to the swings, Kara snatches an extra pack of cookies, and they sit in silence together, watching passersby as they eat – Kara far more enthusiastically than Lena – it very rapidly becomes habitual.

 

This goes undisturbed for at least a month, April falling through and spring rolling on – soft dandelions sprouting, even softer clouds coating the sky – with little to no event, but a week into May, Kara comes to their bench with a new sketch book Eliza had bought her.

 

( _It’d been not unlike pulling teeth to get Kara out of her safely guarded comfort zone for a long while, Jeremiah had tried with several attempts at ice cream, sometimes even offering to play catch with her like he had with Alex, but Kara had stewed in the residuals of her trauma, persistently stuck within her farouche ways._

_Eliza had caught her, though – Kara staring far too expectantly at the art supplies they’d passed as they were grocery shopping – offering her a heartfelt look and a hand on her shoulder, nudging her toward the different assortment of colored pencils and acrylic paints._

_Kara couldn’t help but radiate a bit of sunshine, her old self peeking through the curtains, smiling as she’d tripped over her shoelaces on her way to the notebooks. Alex had stomped her feet and groaned in typical teenager fashion, though still unable to not watch Kara with a curious eye._

_It’d been the first time she’d genuinely beamed in a month_.)

 

When Kara shows up at the bench, sketchbook tucked underneath her arm as she skips toward their spot, Lena gives her a look she can’t immediately decipher.

 

She freezes – almost comically stuttering her legs into a standstill, leaning back onto the balls of her feet as the crinkle separating her eyebrows forms – Lena seeming torn between amusement and confusion, glancing down at the pencil in Kara’s left hand and the emptiness of her other.

 

And – _oh_ , she’d forgotten to get their cookies earlier that morning, too excited to show of her pad – Kara grimaces, the childlike innocence of it easier than breathing, and it feels good to be a kid again, when these past few weeks she’s felt like everything but.

 

“I forgot our snacks,” she says, creeping dangerously close to sheepish, and attempts to relieve Lena with a smile, shaky as it is.

 

Lena laughs, small, and Kara kind of wants to cup the noise between her hands and bring it home with her. “It’s okay,” she amends, reaching into her own lunchbox and pulling out two juice pouches. “I wasn’t feeling very hungry, anyway.”

 

The silence following that persists for a few more seconds – Kara marveling at Lena’s hands for whatever reason – before she gives a jerky nod and grabs one of the drinks with her free fingers.

 

“What’s that?” Lena asks, peering at her arm, and Kara nearly forgets what she’s holding.

 

“Oh, this?” She grins, sitting down as she fumbles her juice pouch and pencil into one hand, using the other to grab her sketchbook. “Eliza got it for me.”

 

“Eliza?” Kara then vaguely registers that they’d never discussed the current state of her living situation and deflates a little at the prospect. Not exactly a fun topic.

 

“Uh, yeah – she’s – well, she’s my foster mom,” Kara explains, setting the pad and pencil in her lap, nervously trying to thumb the straw into her drink. She glances up, awaiting the inevitable awkwardness, but hope flutters within her chest when she’s met with Lena’s eyes, somehow understanding, urging her forth.

 

Wind blows a lock of gold in front of her face, Kara tucking it back behind her ear, swallowing, the pouch forgotten and set to the side. “My parents – they… died a little while ago – and a friend of theirs adopted me. I didn’t really have anyone else to go to.” The words tumble from her in a thick breath, and she continues, “Mom and dad moved from a different country, they were… out casted or something?  I don’t really understand, I just know I didn’t have any family left here, aside from my cousin – but he’s – he’s so _busy_ , and.”

 

Kara stops at the tentative touch dusting over her upturned palm, which she hadn’t even realized she was kind of flailing around as she spoke. Lena’s fingers are hesitant against the lines of her inner hand, not necessarily trying to intertwine them, but to gather Kara’s attention, if only for a moment.

 

She looks up, breathing steadily, her smile watery but honest, catching Lena’s soft gaze. “I get it,” Lena says, and it sounds an awful lot like an admission, of what, Kara doesn’t know. Though, she doesn’t have to ponder long, Lena suddenly remembering herself and withdrawing her touch.

 

(Kara nearly has the gall to miss it, so _comforting_ , but doesn’t quite get there as Lena starts talking again.)

 

“I’m adopted, too. The Luthors took me in a long time ago, I’ve been living with Lex and them ever since.”

 

Tenderness pools in Kara’s abdomen, Lena looking so mature as she says this – when in reality, she’s barely a few months older than Kara is – and she should’ve figured she’d say something wrong, should’ve known she’d mess it up quicker than it was built.

 

“Are they nice?” Kara asks.

 

Lena wastes no time diminishing beneath her words and whatever weight they seem to pose, frowning like she’s contemplating another admission, but instead says, “I like Lex.”

 

Kara tries to dissipate any lingering tension, picking up her drink and resuming opening it, mourning the death of Lena’s smile, at least for now. “Is he your brother?”

 

“Yeah,” Lena nods, mimicking Kara’s movements and beginning to sip at her pouch, too.

 

“I have a foster sister, her name’s Alex. She’s like, two grades above us.” Lena stares at her curiously, a second or so passing before her eyes widen.

 

Sputtering – which she still somehow manages to do with elegance no eleven year old should be able to manage, Kara notes – Lena’s gaze flickers around her face, “Alex Danvers?”

 

Kara squints at her, taking in the expression drawn across her face, the green of her eyes scintillating beneath lavish afternoon light. The confusion is plain in her words as she talks, “Well, _yeah_ , but how’d you know that?”

 

“Everyone talks about her, she went here last year,” Lena says.

 

“And?” If there’s a point, it’s drifting hazily over her head. 

 

“Kara,” she says, looking affronted, hands now clasped together in front of her. “She’s so _cool_.”

 

Suddenly, it clicks and Kara’s grin has never been broader. “Oh, I _know_.”

 

* * *

 

Their fifth grade year, they’re in the same class.

 

Kara assumes it’s sheer luck, at first, when she bounds into her classroom that first morning with her new lunchbox and a plain-speaking enthusiasm stretching thin across her face. Lena’s already there – so typically tucked into a corner closest to the teacher’s desk – nose buried in a book with her bag slung over the back of her chair.

 

She nearly trips over her own two feet running across the room to her.

 

Lena barely glances up as she skids to a stop before her, enraptured within the world of novel that definitely doesn’t look like something a _fifth grader_ should be reading, but Kara’s hands wave around too excitedly to ignore. Her hair is golden and glinting in its ponytail from the illumination peering out of the sky through the open window nearby; Miss Quinn, apparently, believes an open window-open door policy, thinks that it may help kids flower into their true selves if they don’t see any “closed” opportunities.

 

(The swelling of her heart is instant for her teacher, Harley – as Kara had heard her affectionately referred to as by the woman next door, Miss Isley – causing a booming colored ruby to bloom inside her rib cage. Even if she’s a little… wacky.)

 

Others are slowly filtering into the classroom when Lena smiles at her fondly, eyes a little wide as she motions toward the seat behind her. Kara bounces into it and Lena turns around in her chair, peering at her over a shoulder.

 

“How’d you get into this class?” Lena asks, brow furrowed, and Kara’s bemusement is quick to form.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“It was full months ago, Kara. Miss Quinn’s… _eccentric_ teaching style’s in high demand,” she says, dog earing a page of her book and grabbing a pencil. “The waiting list is a mile long.”

 

Kara’s still mesmerized by Lena’s maturity, not quite getting why she seemed to grow up so fast, but brushes the thought aside with a flick of the head, probably not asking the right question, then, “How do you know that?”

 

Lena’s lips draw together, pursing them as she shuts her eyes for a moment before folding her arms in front of her. It isn’t defensive, really, not as Kara reads it, but there’s something pained in her expression. “Lillian accepts nothing but the best, I heard her talking about it with my father.”

 

A frown flattens Kara’s already deflating smile at the mention of Lillian, her understanding of their relationship doesn’t run rather deep, but she just gives Kara an icky feeling in her chest. Lena seems to, though silently, share the sentiment.

 

“I don’t know,” she answers, rather belatedly, squinting and brushing her glasses further up her nose. How _did_ she get in here? She doesn’t remember anything about waiting lists or requests to enter an elite class – all she can really recall is gushing to Jeremiah about her friend Lena, how she’d be gone during summer to Paris, of all places, how she just wished they’d be in the same class next year, because just recess and sometimes-lunches aren’t enough – and then it clicks, with an audible noise as she clamps her mouth shut.

 

Mulling it over, she grins. Kara had heard a hushed discussion a few weeks ago, unable to fall asleep late into the night with the restless memory her parents’ death instilled, of Eliza and Jeremiah’s. They’d said things like _“her only friend,”_ and _“I’ll see if I can pull some strings.”_

 

Kara isn’t sure what Jeremiah does, exactly, but he’s always gone for long stretches of time and they do live in a big house. Eliza is a scientist, highly regarded at that, but it isn’t like she has an in depth understanding of what that entails.

 

(Alex had been drawing closer to her, though they’re conversations weren’t really about her parents, it was a sore subject for her and Kara’d be an idiot not the respect that. She took whatever pieces of companionship Alex was gradually offering her, never pushing even if she yearned for more. The bridge between them was steadily building and Kara would be damned if she let it fall into ruin.) 

 

“Actually, I think I have an idea,” she murmurs softly, nodding her head at nothing and watching as Lena smiles over at her. She warms – allows a heavyset green to bask over her thoughts, all so distinctly _Lena_ – and vows to make this the best year of elementary school either of them had-had yet. 

 

* * *

 

Months pass by in a blur of art and homework, of shared cookies and juice pouches offered. Eliza receives at least three calls about how Kara needs to learn how to better control her laughter, that while it’s all bubbly and faint, it underlies her teacher’s lessons, and even if Kara gets the material already, it doesn’t mean everyone else does. 

 

It’s barely often that Lena’s allowed over at the Danvers’ home. Usually, though, it’s under the guise of two brains work better than one – they’re already learning sixth grade math, the class more advanced than the rest of the school – and Lillian rarely agrees to such terms. Lena has a tutor, Lena has the _best_ tutor, actually, if you asked her mother.

 

Whenever said tutor cancels, too many appointments with too many elites, Lillian can’t be bothered to watch over Lena during the afternoon, so it’s only then that she’s allowed to come over.

 

Eliza never hesitates to welcome her with open arms and a soft side hug as she carries a tray of snacks in her other hand. And Lena, for her part, never fails to look startled by the gentle kindness Kara’s foster mom offers the moment she enters the room. Kara wants to ask, really, she does; she wants to ask why, _why_ does an ever composed Lena Luthor stutter under any display of affection, _why_ does it always seem like she doesn’t know what to do with it when she gets it?

 

It’s written in Kara’s eyes, an indefinite scripture scrawled across her face whenever Lena flinches, but she doesn’t dare to ever directly ask. Her sneaking suspicion tells her Lena would lie, anyway, maybe even close herself off. So, if it’s better to watch from the sidelines and support her until she’s ready to come over on her own, Kara’s happy to wait an eternity.

 

Their worksheets are scattered around the kitchen table, various equations and multiplication tables, Lena’s fancy graphing calculator next to Kara’s dollar store one. The math has long since been abandoned, Kara doodling haphazardly in her now gently worn sketchpad, Lena a few pages in to the third Harry Potter book.

 

( _Because,_ honestly _, “The Catcher in the Rye, Lena – what’re you like, forty? Read something fun.”_

 

 _It took Lena all but two pages to become enraptured, now the entire set of Kara’s resides in Lena’s bookshelf_.)

 

Kara’s brow is furrowed in a subdued sort of concentration, her pencil scribbling in an attempt to shade a shadow under the tree she drew. It’s messy, but honest, undoubtedly a Kara Danvers’ original like the many hanging up around her room and on the fridge in the kitchen. They look kind of poor next to Alex’s all A’s report card, though pride still swells in her chest whenever Eliza marvels over the lines of her work.

 

Gradually, she’s finding her own style. Kara draws with all the hues of color she imagines in the back of her mind’s eye, not really knowing that it’s unnatural to feel color so deeply. When Lena’s next to her, she can’t help but sketch trees, hills and grass. The green mixes with browns and yellows, her colored pencils wearing thin as she strokes them across the paper.

 

Lena remains enthralled by the Prisoner of Azkaban, the pages feathering under her fingers at an alarming rate. Kara doesn’t even question how she can read so fast, learning long ago that it’d be pointless to question Lena’s unfaltering dedication to anything she sets her mind on.

 

They’re still like this an hour later when Alex comes home, barely glancing at them and heading straight for the fridge to get a drink. It’s unusual for them to be so quiet, but around twenty minutes ago when Kara had made a meek try at conversation, Lena hadn’t even bothered looking up, only humming under her breath and nodding like she was actually listen to what she had said.

 

(Kara’s pretty certain she _wasn’t_.)

 

“Doesn’t look like you’re doing homework to me.” Alex tips her head over at Kara, cracking open a water bottle after dropping her bag off her shoulder and onto the counter.

 

Kara’s cringe is inward and almost imperceptible, but something tells her Alex catches it, anyway. “We’re taking a break,” she lies, because she’s sure that you’d have to actually start work before you could pause it.

 

Alex seems scarcely convinced, though still unbothered, probably because she doesn’t care that much. And why would she? She’s in seventh grade and the star of her school’s science club, has much better things to do than fret over whether or not Kara’s memorized her times tables.

 

“Make sure my Mom doesn’t notice how long this “break” is taking,” she warns, taking a swig of her water before capping it off and walking to the edge of the room. Before leaving, Alex turns back, if only for a second, nodding toward the drawing in front of Kara. “That’s really good, by the way.”

 

With that, she vanishes and Kara’s smile is so bright it could blister someone’s skin if they came too close. She doesn’t even realize her eyes are trailing over where Alex once was until Lena nudges her shin with her foot. Their eyes make contact and Lena has slight crinkles around hers from grinning back at her.

 

“I told you she likes you,” Lena prods, sly with the raise of one brow.

 

Flush rises up Kara’s neck in a flash of heat, voice sputtering following Lena’s words, spoken like they’re _so_ all-knowing. Kara lets out a low “ _pft_ ” noise, pushing her glasses back up her nose and moving to grab the homework they’d abandoned hours ago.

 

(Lena had been her one genuine constant in the reassurance of Alex’s friendship. Jeremiah and Eliza were too biased, even if she did believe what they were saying, it didn’t mean much because they _had_ to say it.

 

It wasn’t Lena’s obligation to soothe her worries, not to mention that she’d been through this already, with Lex. Though, from what Kara’s gathered of Lena’s brief and stunted stories of the Luthors, it hadn’t taken Lex nearly as long to accept Lena as it’s taking Alex to do the same for her.)

 

“We should do this, huh?”

 

Lena nods in response, twiddling a mechanical pencil between her fingers and scooting her chair closer to Kara’s. They’re shoulder to shoulder for the next hour, arguing halfheartedly over formulas and giggling far more than necessary when doing math.

 

_(“You know what’s funnier than twenty four?” Kara had asked, a faux type of solemn since she couldn’t erase the grin from her face._

_Lena had only a few seconds to be perplexed before the realization was prickling at her lips, tugging them into a smile. “I don’t know,” she says with a grand sigh, placing her head in one hand and looking over at Kara. “What’s funnier than twenty four?”_

_“ **Twenty five**.”_

_Their laughter’s so loud that Eliza comes in from her study just to shush them, though it isn’t absent of something fond dripping into her voice_.)

 

The homework’s conquered, finally, just shy of dinner and with such concentrated effort that Kara becomes exhausted afterward. Eliza’s in the middle of setting plates on the kitchen table when there’s a sharp knock at the door.

 

Kara almost misses the way Lena shrinks, but she was already looking over at her anyway, watching as she goes from animatedly talking to an instant still. Her eyes grow more reserved and she draws her hands back into her lap, Eliza walking off with a thrown “I’ll get it,” at them as she dries her hands with a towel and goes down the hallway.

 

Voices crawl through the air, but they’re indistinct and Kara wishes she had super hearing because, _boy_ , that’d come in handy, wouldn’t it? But maybe it’d be inconvenient, sometimes, she’d probably die if she had to hear whatever Alex talks about with her “friend” Maggie when she shuts the door.

 

When Eliza comes back in, it’s with another woman close in tow. Kara’s recognition isn’t immediate, but there’s pearls lining the woman’s collar that have to be worth more than anything she’s ever owned combined, and her thoughts call at her restlessly: _Lillian Luthor_.

 

A black, cavernous and dark, seeps into Kara’s mind until it’s all shadows, clouded.

 

She’s never actually come inside before, either sending her driver to knock or merely having him honk his horn from the driveway. If Kara were a little older, perhaps she’d recognize it as some sort of power play, but she isn’t, so she doesn’t.

 

Kara attempts to blow away the dreadful ebony circling her mind’s eye, taking an extinguisher to her thoughts as she scrambles up from her seat and offers out her hand to Lillian. “Hi,” she says, smiling, “I’m Kara.”

 

Lillian looks at her hand like she’d offered her the plague on a silver platter, Lena wincing from behind them as she watches on in vague horror. Lena told her she wasn’t warm like Eliza, but she’d never really let on just how cold she was. The disinterest reflects in her eyes, and Kara thinks she only shakes her hand because she can feel Eliza’s light glare from behind.

 

“A pleasure,” Lillian drawls, taking a step passed her to get closer to Lena. She has her chin tilted up and beckons her daughter with the motion of one finger, Kara’s stare fretting between them, trying to find the link of tension because it’s so palpable she thinks she should be able to see it.

 

Lena had once said Lillian Luthor never does something without a reason, never acts without a plan b, c or d. Kara hadn’t got it, still doesn’t, really, but she thinks she has a broader understanding as she sees them interact with one another. It’s so cordial, nothing like how Eliza dotes on her, and an ache cracks at Kara’s ribs – because, just – Lena deserves so much, she deserves everything, more than whatever _this_ is.

 

But it isn’t Kara’s place to say, she doesn’t think. At the very least, she can’t in front of everyone, but her resolve is gradually growing, silent and blowing away the thick smoke Lillian had filtered into her mind.

 

She’s too young to grasp fully onto the situation, with her still-hesitant, feathering fingers, but she’s in a “special” class for a reason, one outside of Jeremiah’s smooth way with words and Eliza’s standing in the realm of science. Kara’s _smart_ , if not only a little slow to the draw in some social situations.

 

(Not nearly as smart as Lena, but comparing anyone to a child prodigy just doesn’t seem that fair.)

 

“Lena,” Lillian calls with a quick snap of the wrist, seemingly frustrated that her silent iteration wasn’t enough to get her daughter standing. Lena’s movements are stuttered and frantic, then, gathering up her homework and neatly putting it away in her backpack.

 

The eyes Kara meets are apologetic, and she kind of wants to hug Lena because she has nothing to be sorry about, but the atmosphere of the room says that’s a no-go, so she just waves, ever awkward in her nature.

 

Lillian stares at Eliza with a challenge that Kara doesn’t exactly notice, let alone understand, before heading out toward the front door, not a single word said. Lena trails inelegantly behind, sparing a look at Kara over her shoulder.

 

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Kara asks, unsure as to why it sounds so much like a question, especially when she knows Lena’s not allowed to get out of school unless she’s terminally ill and dying.

 

The other girl’s smile is tight, but she nods nevertheless, hurrying after the retreating figure of her mother, stuffing a pencil in the side pocket of her bag.

 

They’re gone and Kara huffs a little, air blown out of her lungs and arms crossed over chest. Eliza’s hand is at her shoulder, a gentle touch that’s always accompanied with kind eyes and a smile, but she doesn’t look up, scuffing her feet against the floor.

 

Silence persists, though only for so long, her foster mom’s hand giving Kara a squeeze, soft.

 

“She’s one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, isn’t she?” Eliza comments after a moment, and Kara finds it hard not to laugh, feeling a fraction better already.

 

* * *

 

The entirety of their fifth grade year goes a little like that. Lillian takes weeks to be convinced that allowing Lena come over and converse with such a simpleton as a Kara is beneficial. It’s never actually worded like that, but something tells Kara that’s what she’s thinking.

 

Lillian never comes back inside, after every time they hang out, it’s like a clock resents in her mind and she’s back to having to be convinced they can spend time with one another outside of school. They only ever get to be together on Wednesdays, because Lena’s cello lessons are on Mondays, Tuesdays are reserved for her exclusive tutor, Thursdays Lena fences, and Fridays she’s at the Luthor’s farm studying with an equestrian. Whatever _that_ means.

 

( _Weekends are out of the question from the very start._

_“Family days,” Lena had said, a dismissive air around the way it comes out sitting ill on Kara’s chest. She doesn’t ask because of the look in Lena’s eyes, all green and pleading, and barely wants to know what fun entails with Lillian Luthor._

_It’s probably something like going to the ballet, or whatever else dignified people do. She shudders at the thought_.)

 

They make due, though, Eliza still getting the occasional call from Miss Quinn. Kara never fails to take the fault in class, immediately laying blame on herself if they’re caught giggling a little too frequently throughout the lesson. It even becomes so instinctive, protecting Lena, that she does it when they’re at her house, too.

 

Lena spills her orange juice, knocking it over the worksheets they’d been dutifully ignoring up until then, and instantly becomes frenetic, scrabbling at the papers and mumbling “sorry,” over and over again.

 

“I’m _so_ sorry,” Lena murmurs, softer and quieter than anything Kara has ever heard before. A feeling thrums in her limbs, buzzing and almost unfamiliar, sadness dripping through her veins in a dark, navy blue.

 

Her hands are wiping around as if they’re mindless, circling over the mess with bunched up paper towels, doing little help and more harm, spreading the juice, if anything. The murmurs grow fainter until they fade into nothingness, Lena’s arms stilling and her eyes shut.

 

Kara covers the other girl’s fingers with her own. Uncertain, she says, “ _Lena_ –” but Alex is coming into the dining room, surveying the scene with a critical eye and a cross of arms.

 

“Mom isn’t going to like that,” she comments, raising an eyebrow and Kara’s glare flares to life, Lena beginning to stutter beside her, but she’s quicker to the jump.

 

“It’s my fault, okay?” Lena starts like she’s going to speak against Kara, but she hushes her by squeezing over her fingers, their hands still awkwardly linked together. “You know me,” Kara laughs, totally forced, “I’m clumsy.”

 

“ _Right_ …” Alex drawls, unconvinced though losing her fight and interest in equal measure. Kara continues to stand her ground, never failing to maintain eye contact as Lena withers away at her side. She allows her this, at least, stepping back from the table and beginning to leave the room.

 

“Clean it up before she gets back from the store,” she says.

 

Kara nods, determined. “Don’t say anything about it and I won’t tell her you weren’t watching us the entire time,” she calls back, Alex stiffening for a moment before she resigns, leaving them finally with a two fingered salute.

 

“Gotcha.”

 

She blows out a puff of air, cheeks deflating along with her fighting stance once Alex is out of sight. Kara barely realizes she’s still clasping Lena’s hands, all protective and soft at the same time, but when she does, she stutters out an apology, retracting her fingers and pushing glasses further up the bridge of her nose.

 

(Which only makes the skin there sticky, wet and uncomfortable. _Good one, Danvers_.)

 

“You didn’t have to do that,” Lena admits after a moment, glancing down at her hands and balling up the towels to throw away in the trash.

 

It’s kind of meek, the way Lena busies herself with cleaning again, Kara then joining, gathering more napkins from the counter nearby. She’s unsure how to reassure her, unable to explain the protectiveness that burns so fierce around her heart. Kara’s experience in this is rather minimal, her friends from before everything with her parents were never this close, never this meaningful and so easy to click with. How Lena fumbles around to wipe up the remnants of orange staining their homework speaks volumes, speaks that maybe she doesn’t know what to do, either.

 

“I didn’t have to,” Kara mumbles, voice building into something stronger as she finally catches Lena’s eye, “I _wanted_ to.”

 

And that’s that, isn’t it? Lena smiles like she doesn’t understand, bemused, but doesn’t question it. For that, Kara’s grateful.

 

She isn’t sure what she’d say, anyway.

 

* * *

 

Lena says she’s moving in the middle of their seventh grade year.

 

Which is sad, really. Their friendships finally in full bloom, a carefully tended to flower, after a near three years; they have a few classes together this time around after a tumultuous sixth grade year of none with one another at all, and they’ve fallen into a contented companionship. They share things now, secrets and memories, they talk about everything and nothing.

 

Lena is green, a striking emerald in a stretch of grey that goes on for miles. She’s a soft fern in the morning and viridescent at night, she’s a pinnacle of varying shades of one color. Kara draws forests on the side of her notes, the leaves mirroring whatever hue Lena’s eyes were earlier that day, her colored pencil wearing thin with the weight of consistent strokes. For the first time ever, Kara thinks of someone in more than one hue of color, because Lena and their friendship is every green found on earth.

 

Alex was there, too, a year ago when she was in eighth grade, but still a fixture in their lives. She sometimes sat with them at lunch when she wasn’t in the lab with her friends, and Kara thinks her name in a chestnut brown that matches her fond gaze.  

 

But – but, Lena – she’s _leaving_ and there’s an undeniable ache building in Kara’s chest as she tells her why she’s going away.

 

“It’s Lex,” Lena admits in a stuttered breath, wringing her hands in front of her and Kara wants to intertwine their fingers, to just stop the fidgeting, but something doesn’t seem right about all of this, so she doesn’t. The wrongfulness only grows, an uncomfortable itch behind her eyes as she watches her friend pace.

 

Lena draws out a sigh, looking at Kara, and all she can think is green, green, and _green_ –

 

“He did something, Kara. Something bad, and my parents can’t cover it up this time.”

 

“What did he –” Kara starts, but Lena’s splaying her fingers of one hand in front of her as she speaks, the other resting at the side of her neck, just below her jaw, and the cuff of her sweater rides up, revealing darkened, purple marks that look suspiciously like fingerprints along her wrist. Kara’s heart stops. “Did he – _Lena_ , did Lex – did he do that to you?”

 

She’s gesturing absently to Lena’s forearm, a pain in her voice that reflects in her eyes, too. Lena’s wince is prompt, lightning quick as she thumbs the wool back over her skin. She notices the fight or flight in her stare, how it flickers toward the exit of Kara’s room, and she softens the best she can with what temper is effervescing at the back of her head.

 

“No,” Lena says, somehow firm as her hands still shake, and Kara believes her,  despite the lack of explanation as to how she got – or rather who put – the marks there. Lena wouldn’t lie to her, but just because Lex didn’t hurt her, doesn’t mean he didn’t hurt anyone else. She recognizes the pleading her friend emanates, versed in it after many nights of Lena sneaking into Kara’s room late at night.

 

( _The first time it happened, they were in their second semester of sixth grade, having been at least a week since they’d seen each other outside of rushed lunch breaks and small intervals between classes._

_Hands of the clock on her desk were nearing a thin ten o’clock, Kara’s determination to finish her drawing of the ocean stretching her passed the bedtime Eliza had set of nine thirty. The lamp beside her paper illuminated the surface in a dim tint of yellow, casting a glow over the waves Kara continued to create._

_She was developing the shadows of the water, thinking of the vivid cerulean that adoration makes her see, when the first peck at her window echoed throughout the room. It was so faint Kara thought she imagined it, but another came, then another, and **anothe** r – pebbles, tapping away at the glass of the wall until she set her pencil down and got up from her chair to look through the panes. _

_Lena stood at the bottom of Kara’s line of sight, scarcely coming into view as she waved from her position in the backyard. Fingers had adjusted her glasses, trying to get a better look at Lena’s expression to no avail. They’d played a vague game of charades before Kara managed to just give up and let her friend in through the backdoor._

_Tiptoeing through the house, Kara nearly tripped when she noticed light still peering out from under Alex’s door. Though everything was relatively silent, not a creak nor groan from the floorboards as Kara had made her way down the stairs, a shiver still fought to climb the ladder of her spine, slinking up with the hope that Alex had her headphones on, per usual._

_When she opened the door, Lena looked diffident, shrinking in on herself under the gaze Kara offered her, filtered with concern. Neither had spoken for several seconds, the quiet inched on uncomfortably until Lena cleared her throat, shy in the step she then took forward._

_A pain gnawed at Kara’s hands, so desperate to reach out and comfort, but she didn’t know how, let alone what was wrong._

_“Hey,” Lena answered, the question in Kara’s outstretched fingers. They withdrew back into her palms, arms fallen to her sides._

_She smiled over at Lena, all moonlit skin beneath the sky of stars, shaky as she had tilted her head. “Are you okay?”_

_The words made her waver, lip quivered and she shook her head._

_It was all the incentive Kara needed to tug her further into the house, the one she’d rather be Lena’s home than the stories high, cold palace she actually lived in._

_It didn’t matter how big it was, not if Lillian made it feel so small, so trapped_.)

 

In bold letters, it writes across Lena’s forehead: _Don’t ask. Please don’t ask_.

 

It hurts, just like it does every time, but with a renewed vigor as she pushes aside the concern tearing a whole in her chest and lets it go. It isn’t the first time she’d noticed Lena’s skittering tendencies, the ones that came fewer and farther between the older they got, the more they grew, the easier masking things became.

 

But it _is_ the first time Kara’s noticed anything of the physical variety. Something about the manner in which Lena’s quicker to cover this up than any other of her flinches, the scars that were invisible and spoke of something more emotional, though no less visceral, makes an uneasy feeling grate at Kara’s stomach.

 

One day, Kara thinks. One day Lena might trust her enough to tell her, if that’s even why she won’t. One day, Kara will make whoever hurt her first real friend, sometimes her only friend, pay for whatever they inflicted on her.

 

(Just not now.)

 

Swallowing, Kara nods, unsure as to what she’s doing so at. “What… what did Lex do, Lena?” The whole time, she chases after the sage of Lena’s eyes, following them across the room, then back to her feet, attempting what she can in hopes of catching them.

 

When they finally do glide together, a shared gaze, Kara studies the breaks in Lena’s irises, allowing hazel to drip into the pools of green. She blinks, then, trying to see passed the actual color of them and into their emotion.

 

Just when she thinks she has it figured out, Lena takes a step forward, shaking her head as she speaks, “I don’t know, not exactly.” Hands pick at the bracelet on her left wrist, Kara tracking the movement. “Mother refuses to breathe a word of it outside of hushed whispers to my father,” Lena sighs, the brief nervousness of the notion trickling into Kara’s thoughts by way of an eerie yellow-green, unsettled. “But it’s not – it’s doesn’t look good – she says we have to leave _tomorrow_.”

 

The negative reinforcement kick starts her heart again, going from a flat line to an unsteady uptick, and she isn’t sure if it’s better or worse. Kara’s hands are quick to gather at Lena’s shoulders, an unpracticed touch that causes a swirl of benevolence to roll around in her abdomen. Lena looks scared, and she can’t scratch away that itch from behind her eyes, fizzling uncomfortably.

 

“Tomorrow?” Kara asks, the crinkle, her _signature_ , flourishing to full effect and furrowing her brow. She doesn’t want Lena to leave, doesn’t want her anywhere but next to – or, at least, in the general vicinity of – her at all times.

 

It’s better that way. Lena’s safer, _happier_ , if Kara does say so herself. She can protect her the way she’d promised she would many times, over Eliza’s grilled cheese, their hands linked on the swing sets, Lena huddled under Kara’s comforter and a flashlight blaring so they could read the _Narnia_ books together.

 

(Each promise more earnest than the last, Kara more resilient with every reiteration. _Stronger_.

 

_Because Lena had come to school one day without lunch, turning down anything Kara so much as thought about suggesting, and it’d hit her in all the wrong places. If she focused hard enough, she could swear she heard Lena’s stomach churning, a low rumble that begged for a snack._

_It’s by the third offer, this time a slice of her apples, that Kara breaks under the realization that Lena’s refusing because she thinks it’s better to, thinks she’ll be better if she denies herself such a pleasantry as food. And they’re only in sixth grade, fresh off the bus, Elementary school gone out in a blaze of innocent glory, so why – **why** – is Lena worrying about such a thing as her figure? Her **weight**? _

_“Lena,” Kara soothed, absently brushing her fingertips over the top of Lena’s hand with her free one, the other gesturing at her with an apple slice. “You need to eat.”_

_Lena had slowly grew pliant, a sad smile gripping onto the reigns of her lips. She shook her head, though it seemed to be more at herself rather than at Kara, because a second later she’s taking the apple slice and bringing it toward her mouth._

_“You’re right,” she said, lifting her other hand away from Kara’s insistent fingers and peeling at the red skin of the fruit. “I don’t know what I was – I shouldn’t… let her get in my head like that – thank you, Kara.” Quietly, Lena adjusts in her seat, looking elsewhere. “It’s more than I deserve.”_

_And that… well, that had set off an inferno in Kara’s rib cage, flames eating away at her marrow until it turned her insides into ash. How could someone as wonderful as Lena Luthor, Kara’s **best** friend, think so lowly of herself?_

_“Hey,” Kara said, gently wrapping her fingers around her friend’s wrists, and Lena had stopped chewing, looked downright startled. “You deserve everything,” she continued reverently, cradling Lena’s pulse with her thumb as a reminder._

_“I promise,” Kara added as an afterthought, “if you ever forget that, I’m here. I’ll protect you, okay?”_

_Lena had looked on, quiet, her emerald eyes marveling over Kara’s face in a way didn’t quite understand. It’s probably the first time she feels that thump in her heart, the inconsistent one she would never really know how to explain._

_“Okay,” Lena said, not quite smiling, not yet. “And I, you.”_

_“W-what?” Kara stuttered, suddenly remembering herself and withdrawing her hands._

_Thump, thump, **thump** – _

_“I’ll protect you, too.”_

_“Oh.” At that, Kara grinned, so unyielding that it would blind a passerby if they looked on for too long. Her pinky had drew over to Lena’s, then, linking them in promise._

_“Sounds like a plan.”_ )

 

“It isn’t like mother’s much for giving me choices, regarding where we live shouldn’t be any different,” Lena says, sighing. Her shoulders shrug beneath Kara’s hands, but she makes no genuine move to shake them off. After a beat, she even sets a hesitant one of her own atop Kara’s, crossed over her chest and grazing lightly against Kara’s skin.

 

The beginnings of a spark hiss at her pulse, a foreign feeling that causes white, blinding light to flash in her mind’s eye. Lena’s touch had never felt like that, not ever, and she has to fight a flinch at the sensation.

 

She tries to ease away, tries to avoid any alarm bells while still recanting her hands. It isn’t perfect, altogether, but Lena says nothing as she removes her touch, breath quick and warm as she glances down at her feet, pushing glasses up the bridge of her nose.

 

A question teeters in the silence, and perhaps if either of them really knew how to ask it, knew what it was, maybe they would’ve.

 

(But they don’t. At least, _Kara_ doesn’t. Though, if Lena _does_ , she doesn’t give her any clues.)

 

Thankfully, Lena’s phone begins to buzz and Kara isn’t forced to toss out some stuttered explanation for absolutely nothing. She writes it off, all of it – Lena’s stare, Lena’s touch, the thump thundering in her chest that isn’t really frequent, but becoming more common – and watches the other girl mull over a text, her face pulled tight and unreadable.

 

“I have to go.” She grabs her bag, slinging it over one shoulder and a fissure forms in Kara’s heart. There’s no finality to any of this, it doesn’t sound like goodbye, but something hums at the edge of her thoughts, a whisper that says, _anything that can happen will, like with your parents._

 

“I’ll call you later,” Lena says, in the dark about Kara’s worries, the ones she hides behind a not entirely honest smile, the feeble up tilt of her mouth. The concern is clear across Lena’s face, but she doesn’t have enough time to decipher Kara’s mask.

 

( _“I’m afraid I’ll lose you,” she wants to admit, her foundations shaking. “Just like mom, just like dad.”_

_“You’re all I have,” she can’t say, because there’s Alex, and Eliza, and Jeremiah, and even some others at school, but it’s hard to want anything else if Lena may not be in the picture anymore._ )

 

Kara nods, Lena returning the notion before slipping closer to the door. She’s almost gone before Kara catches her wrist, pausing her departure, unsure.

 

“Wait,” she says, a thunderstorm crackling in her chest as she watches Lena begin to leave _._ Though her retrieval of Lena’s retreating form was quick, it was driven by some deep-seated instinct. They’re face to face again, a foot or so between them, and Kara’s brain short circuits.

 

Lena’s looking at her, Kara returning the eye contact and then some, studying Lena’s face as if she wasn’t ever going to see it again. Which is ridiculous, because she and Lena are a _forever_ , an unbreakable bond.

 

It’s then, a few seconds later, that Kara realizes she didn’t have anything to say – just this guttural need to stop her from leaving – and fidgets in her spot.

 

 

She breathes out, gentle, looking at Lena with a low kind of desperation, “you’ll call me for updates, right?”

 

Lena nods, the green in her eyes so honest.  “Of _course_ I will.”

 

“Okay,” Kara says, feeling the other girl give a soft grip over the fingers she has on her wrist. Mostly to herself, Kara lets the repetition fall, shaky, from her mouth. “– _Okay_.”

 

* * *

 

That night, Kara spreads herself thin waiting for a call that never actually comes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Alex shrugged her shoulders, then. “What’s so important about Lena Luthor?” 
> 
> [...] 
> 
> She laughed, so sharp Alex would’ve had to have strained to hear the humor in it. It’d have been too easy to breathe out an “everything” and reverently hold onto the word, curling it on her tongue and pressing it to the roof of her mouth like she was trying to save it there for life.
> 
> It’d have been too easy, but it wouldn’t have done Lena justice.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise, here i am with gay stuff 5 months later. 
> 
> this chapter felt like a filler to me, but it was definitely important to write. it's kind of a transition piece and since i'm already halfway done with the next chapter, i can definitely promise more meat of the story in that one.
> 
> still, i needed to write this or else it wouldn't have went anywhere and that's what took me so long, so thanks for stickin' by if you did. this is un beta'd again which means all mistakes are gay and also mine.

Lena doesn’t call.

 

Lena doesn’t call and Kara does, but any time she makes the attempt, she’s met with a busy signal, Lena’s voicemail full.

 

Lena doesn’t call, Lena doesn’t _answer_ , and Kara feels like she’s sitting atop a slow-sinking ship, latching onto some blind hope despite the inevitability of drowning.

 

* * *

 

She hears the news a week later, but it isn’t from Lena.

 

Clark stops by, probably for the first time in months, the last being Thanksgiving when he showed up with a new job and a girl on his arm that he met there.

 

She had liked Lois, felt an odd sort of kinship the moment they met.

 

(Kara’s faith in her own intuition is unfailing, the auras of the people she meets filtering into her soul, trickling color into her vision and thoughts. It’s like some kind of detector, a judge of good character and merits, pinging around in her heart. 

 

Lois had bled orange, the shade of a Chinese lantern flower. She was genial, not bending over when she shook Kara’s hand, just like Miss Prince had. It’d meant something that she didn’t know it could, that Lois didn’t look down on her, treating a seventh grader like her equal. She understood it now like she didn’t back then.

 

Not that Eliza nor Jeremiah _did_ look down on her, but sometimes it felt like that, like her problems were trivial in comparison to “grownup” things. They hadn’t meant it, Kara’s certain, it was just something most adults did beyond their own realization.

 

Even Clark was guilty of it, a time or two, but he was more self-aware, glancing on with apologetic eyes if he even _suspected_ he might’ve belittled her. He knew what it was like, her situation, though their understandings were different. Clark hadn’t known his parents before they died, didn’t have any memories of them, an infant left with a babysitter when his mother and father didn’t make it back from a car crash.

 

If that’s more sad or less – Alura’s bright eyes just as fresh in her mind as the day she died, that distinct pain, or Clark’s never knowing his mother’s face outside of a photograph – Kara doesn’t know.)

 

Lois isn’t with him this time. Clark shows up alone, a solemn attitude melting his expression from the normal, kind one into something else. Kara’s sitting at the kitchen table when he walks in, bent over a drawing of a dragon, with green scales and breathing out a blue fire.

 

He’s talking with Jeremiah in the corner, Eliza washing dishes, and everything seems oddly still. The hushed tones grate at the air and it makes Kara feel sort of colorless, like a clear glass of water. She finds she has to strain to try and hear them speaking, anything but stealth as she “casually” scooches her chair closer to the conversation.

 

The legs of it let out a low screech as they pull across the kitchen tiles, as subtle as a gunshot, and Clark seems to notice her intent almost immediately. Kara peers up over the rim of her glasses, making eye contact with him as he does the same thing, and it seems like he softens, if only a fraction.

 

There’s something sad in his eyes, too – that unnaturally, vivid shade of blue that she’s sure her own mirrors, their differences only spoken in the color of their hair and his height on her, which, _really_ , is only fair considering their ages – and she suddenly feels too young, because he’s looking at her like she just wouldn’t get it.

 

She knows he doesn’t mean to be patronizing, that whatever they’re talking about, she probably won’t have that depth of understanding that he and Jeremiah do, but it something stirs in her gut that tells her this is important. That Kara should have a vested interest in what they’re whispering, for some reason. Maybe it’s the rigid shoulders that break Clark’s usual, unimposing posture. Or, maybe, it’s how he keeps looking at her, stuck between sorrow and another thing she can’t pinpoint.

 

 “Hey,” Clark says, a hand grazing the back of her chair as he glances at her now still one. “What’re you drawing?”

 

Kara blanks, blinking owlishly at her cousin, because she honestly didn’t even notice when he stopped talking to Jeremiah and started talking to her.

 

Gripping the reigns, she shuffles her head in a small shake, using an index finger to press the glasses back up her nose. Clark’s palm is big as it slides onto her shoulder, pulling Kara into a quick side hug that she can only half return, her other hand still cradling the colored pencil, hovering above her paper.

 

“Uh,” Kara starts. Her fingers shift into a surer grip and she begins to idly stroke the pencil, viridescent scales vibrant and eye catching. “A dragon,” she says, then, more firmly, “– he’s looking after the princess. Or, I guess he _will_ be when I finish drawing the castle behind him.”

 

Clark nods like he gets it, whatever she’s inadvertently saying, which. Well, even she doesn’t know, so that doesn’t make any sense, like, at all. Sometimes a picture is just a picture, Kara likes dragons, thinks they’re cool. There can’t be a hidden meaning in everything, every line or brush, like her art teacher had said. Sometimes, things just are, and this picture just _is_.

 

But neither of them are saying anything anymore, perched on the edge of silence, like they’re both waiting for a shoe to drop or someone to further explain something that doesn’t need to be. There’s words between them that neither reach for, settled in the air and waiting.

 

It only makes sense that Clark crumbles first. She does have the same puppy dog eyes he did when he was a kid, and they work even better on her.

 

“So,” he says, quiet. “Can I ask you a question?”

 

When Kara nods, on the verge of reassuring him vocally, Clark clears his throat. “Right.” The uncomfortable look he sports makes something turn around in her stomach. “You’re friends with Lena Luthor.”

 

It isn’t a question, so Kara just. _Stares_. Because, what’s that supposed to mean? But then her stomach turns over again, lurching with a surge of hope, and suddenly she has a million questions.

 

( _Where is Lena? What happened? Is she – **God** – is she okay?_

 

Clark looks similar to the day he did when her parents died, but something’s off kilter. There’s an anger, Kara feels it, red hot and prickling at the edge of her eyes, and it causes his shoulders to seem heavy, his face drooped with an unnatural bout of tiredness.)

 

She studies the hard lines in his face, making him look older than he is by the stretch of a mile. The room’s quiet and Kara just notices Eliza in the corner of her eye. Her expression is nearly blank, a hand resting on Jeremiah’s forearm. They both seem weary and Kara can just _barely_ stand it.

 

“What’s going on?” She asks, her grip on the pencil in her fingers loosening so she can set it down on the table. Her hips shift, turning more toward Clark and her foster parents, hovering in the corner. “Did something happen?”

 

Clark’s stiff, but Kara’s insistence doesn’t leave much room for opposition, her words quick and brimming with emotion.

 

“Lena’s brother works – he _worked_ for the same newspaper as me – he had a really bad day,” Clark tries to explain, the uneasiness bubbling up from her gut and wrapping around her lungs. “Some stuff happened at our office,” he sighs, mulling it over mentally like he’s trying to mince his words, and Kara doesn’t know if she wants him to elaborate on this “stuff” that happened.

 

“A few people got injured.” _Oh_. So Lex did hurt someone, or _multiple_ , now. Her mind falls to Lena in an instant, praying with silent reverence that she’s still okay after all of this, but Clark doesn’t let her rest on it that long, pulling out the chair beside her and sitting down.

 

He’s still, in an odd way that doesn’t reflect how he normally acts. “Someone helped him break into our servers from a computer, he had information he shouldn’t have.” Kara’s brow creases, unsure where Clark’s attempting to venture, why it involves her in any way. “The police were able to track the IP address.”

 

He pauses – and this all seems so drone on, the whispering and the over explaining, the lulls of silence and uncertain eyes – it’s killing her. Slowly, softly.

 

“Why’re you telling me this?”

 

Clark glances back to her foster parents, Jeremiah nodding in an affirmation that Kara doesn’t know why Clark needs.

 

“It led to Lena’s laptop, Kara. She’s the one that helped him, so I need you to help me.”

 

She blinks, because… _what_?

 

“What?” Before Kara’s even thinking, she’s shaking her head, a borderline vehement denial to this _thing_ Clark’s trying to propose, to what he’s implying. Like Lena would actually commit some almost act of domestic terrorism.

 

“Lena wouldn’t do that,” she says, her heart hollowing out with the words.

 

“She did, Kara. We have proof –”

 

“You _don’t_ ,” Kara interrupts, the very core of her tone shaky.  “Lena’s a seventh grader! We go to middle school, how could she have _possibly_ –?” She stops. Breathes, lifting her glasses with her left hand and pressing the heel of her palm into her eye with the other. Kara’s world darkens under the pressure, switching to do the same thing to the opposite eye, like she’s trying to subside the emotion, the color of a swarthy red blurring her vision. Anger, she guesses, different from the kind that she’d felt on Clark earlier, less resigned.

 

Clark sighs, it somehow having an adverse effect because his chest only looks like it’s puffed out farther, like the bigger he looks, the more she’ll listen to him.

 

“She was taking classes from a private tutor, did you know that?” Kara’s eyes flicker to Eliza, then back, because they both did, but it was just to help Lena with her studies, to “ _further her ambition,_ ” as Lena had once put, mimicking the words in Lillian’s stony voice.

 

Kara shuffles around in her chair, shrugging. “Well, yeah, but –”

 

“It was for computer science. She was being trained by a hacker, a well-known criminal.” And she hates the way he sounds so final about it. “There were traces left on her laptop. Faint, but unmistakably from the program used to filter into the Daily Planet’s systems.”

 

“So?” She asks, pushing away from the table and standing, her arms now crossed. “Lena wouldn’t do that.”

 

Clark glances to Jeremiah for help, absent, really, but when he tries to move, Eliza stops him with gentle fingers, gripping his forearm again and Kara doesn’t have time to be grateful because her cousin rounds her, the sad expression he wears only strengthening. “I know she was your friend, but –”

 

“Is,” Kara corrects. “ _Is_ my friend.”

 

“I just need your help to find her family, Kara. She trusts you.”

 

She feels her heart shrink, because Clark is _her_ family, the only remaining and known blood relative she has left. But this is – way too much, mostly, way too wrong and her intuition is buzzing because she knows Lena would never – what Clark’s asking her to do, in not so many words, isn’t right. Isn’t even a little bit fair.

 

It’s like he’s trying to get her to choose between family and friends, like he doesn’t know the two are intermingling and Lena was there for her in the way he couldn’t be because he was busy, because he had a life that never stopped running.

 

Lena was there when he wasn’t, understood where he couldn’t. She gave her the peace that wouldn’t solve the loss of her parents, but lessen the blow, at least a touch.

 

“You can’t ask me to – I won’t just – I’m not going to _betray_ her, not just because she’s my friend,” Kara’s expression hardens. “But because she’s innocent. You don’t know her, not like I do.”

 

The air in Clark deflates, just a little, his shoulders sagging as he stands up and comes back in front of her. He’s ready to say something else, to keep fighting because they were both taught to never back down, not from a cause they believed in, but Eliza rounds his side, placing a hand on his shoulder.

 

“That’s enough, sweetie.” She watches as her fingers give a gentle squeeze, the phantom feeling ghosting over her own skin as if Eliza were doing it to her, too. She turns to Kara. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, okay? Go upstairs with Alex.”

 

Her mood’s flat, a surface with no incline and little chance of growing. Everyone looks exhausted, edging toward their own ends, and Kara isn’t sure why she says it, but the words tumble before she can stop them.

 

“It doesn’t matter.” Legs shuffle to the doorway, her drawing abandoned on the table. “She isn’t answering any of my calls, anyway.”

 

* * *

 

Alex is upstairs – tinkering with something, thankfully alone, a wrench in her hand – just like Eliza had said.

 

Kara isn’t sniffling, necessarily. She’s just… brushing a thumb beneath the rim of her eye when she comes into Alex’s room. Alex looks affronted for a second, spinning the tool in her fingers before dropping it as she deserts her project, but it doesn’t last for so long.

 

She’s at Kara’s side quick, hands on either of her shoulders, gently drawing circles into them, a torn expression on her face. It seems Kara doesn’t have to say much, or rather _can’t_ , because the moment Alex is touching her, she crumbles underneath the poorly strewn façade. Her eyes are shut tight and she clings to her sister’s back, burrowing her dampening face into Alex’s shirt.

 

Alex is quiet, barring the low susurrus she coos into Kara’s ear, and Kara thinks it probably should be a little more awkward, since it’s their first hug that’s lasted longer than a few seconds, but it isn’t. It’s warm, it’s home, and she holds onto the thread of Alex’s companionship with a desperation she didn’t know she had.

 

(There’s nothing she considers good that came from her parents dying, she’ll never think that, but reality twists at Kara’s gut: _she doesn’t know how she’d survive without Alex by her side_.)

 

* * *

 

Days turn into weeks, weeks slowly churning into a month since Clark had first stopped by.

 

The time that passes isn’t hollow, not empty, but it doesn’t feel as full as it could. Kara never stops maintaining Lena’s innocence, whether that being with silent iterations in her own thoughts, to Clark, or to other kids at school.

 

Because, apparently, the ever illusive Luthors had made the news. Their laundry is dirty and spread across the city for all of Midvale to see. Kara’s heart twinges when she thinks about what Lena must be going through, wherever she is.

 

The students they’d share classes with either glance at Kara with sadness or suspicion. She isn’t fond of them, the looks, but if she’s learned anything from being an orphan, to being adopted, to being – _this_ , whatever it is – it’s that they’re opinions don’t matter.

 

Kara brushes off the staring, finds comfort in the few friends she does have that don’t care or don’t know anything about Lena Luthor and her supposed psychotic brother.

 

( _Who’s been caught, by the way. Locked in a jail cell and impending trial._

_She remembers seeing it on TV last week, far too late into the night when she definitely shouldn’t have been awake, but Jeremiah rests like a tank and Eliza had learned a while ago not to ask too many questions if Kara couldn’t sleep._

_It’s breaking news, even at one o’clock in the morning. Lex looked pale in shackles, seen through the lenses of several reporters’ cameras. He’d been holed up in some warehouse, undoubtedly owned by the Luthor Corporation, eating away at a month’s supply of food and water._

_The network listed the victims of the incident underneath a vision of Lex being thrown into the back of a police car, a navy blue banner with white lettering rolling across the TV screen._

_First was the deceased, a lone, unlucky man by a name of which Kara doesn’t know how to even begin to pronounce. Next came the injured, a much longer list, she noted. Lois is the fourth name she’d seen, her heart stuttered out and her fingers clenched with the urge to call Clark._

_To say sorry, to say she didn’t know, but that’d be closely followed with something like “I still wouldn’t have sold Lena out, even if I could’ve,” and it was drawing close to two, so she turned the TV off instead, the back of it humming with static, and silently went back upstairs._ )

 

Jimmy Olsen – James, if you’d asked him and not the teacher who’d done the introductions – transfers into her class not long after, with a charismatic smile and good natured handshake. Which people, _kids_ , do now, she guesses, only somewhat bitterly.

 

James is purple, the color skyrocketing over Kara’s thoughts and making her heart hammer in her chest. It’s a royal shade, saintly, and she thinks about it for far longer than she should following their initial meeting.

 

Being friends with James also entails being friends with Winn, the sort of geeky kid in her science class that James mentioned he knew through his parents. He’s harmless, a light blue, all kind eyes and long sentences she has to pretend she understands, sometimes.

 

A small part of her thinks he’d get along dangerously well with Lena, but Kara tries to brush that away. She doesn’t want to forget her, really, it’d just be nice if Lena Luthor wasn’t the only thing on her mind for the rest of her remaining school career. Kara had even fell behind in her classes, those first few days. The ache in her chest swells, she misses Lena, but still has to be… functional, if at least to later find a way to help her.

 

(God knows being on “the lamb” with Lionel and Lillian can only serve to be detrimental to one’s mental health.

 

Kara just wishes they’d come back, prove their daughter’s innocence, take responsibility for Lex and his actions.

 

That dream seems to be a far cry from their current reality, though.)

 

Everything seems kind of still, for a little while. Life goes on with little draw away from routine, Kara stuck to James’ and Winn’s sides. They both welcome her with their arms wide open, James’ kind of too big for his body, Winn’s shorter but still long enough to hug her the whole way around.

 

It isn’t as easy as being friends with Lena was, but they certainly don’t make it that hard, either.

 

She throws herself into her schoolwork, too, as much as someone in middle school can. Deadlines are beat, her book reports longer, and Kara gets quicker, building onto her already steadfast intelligence. She isn’t exactly on par with Alex, not quite, and probably even farther from Lena, but she still doesn’t have to pay attention as much as others do, information sinking into thought with less effort than average.

 

And colors continue to be filtered into emotions, to reign around in Kara’s heart and associate themselves with her friends, but there’s never a green that feels exactly like any one of Lena’s.

 

* * *

 

It isn’t until her freshman year that anything really unravels again.

 

(Seventh grade’s ending was absent of flare, anyone missing remaining that way, at least for then.

 

Eighth grade wasn’t monotonous, it’d been a year of firsts, sort of: first school event – a spring formal she’d went to with friends, Winn and James on either of her arms as Eliza had sent her off with a wave, smile ruling importance over her misty eyes – first dance, _at_ said school event – James hands awkward and big at Kara’s sides, her fingers folded over his neck – and even first graduation, because, she guesses some middle schools did that.

 

There’s no cap and gown, no gallant ceremony that required some huge space, filled with thousands of seats, but – it’d been… – _homely_ , with a bowl of fruit punch and parents regaling each other with stories of their kids throughout the year. Alex had come, too, Eliza tailing behind her, a silent “sorry” on her face when Kara noticed Jeremiah couldn’t make it.

 

Her dress was flowing, a delicate blue shade, patterned flowers blooming across it. Kara pushed at them, palms flickering down from hips to knees, before she walked up onto the stage of the school auditorium and accepted her certificate of completion. 

 

Pride had risen in Kara’s chest, a floaty feeling that’d made her eyes crinkle when she looked out into the crowd only to see Alex _whooping_ and Eliza gazing at her fondly, hands on top of each other over her heart.

 

There’s pictures, somewhere, of she, James and Winn squeezed closely together – James less gauche in his own body as he’d been the day Kara had first met him, Winn’s face smooshed into James’ shoulder as he reached all the way around him to get a hand on Kara’s, too – their certificates held at their sides, grinning beyond belief.

 

She’d faintly registered Lena’s absence, even then. Like there was a missing space next to Kara that could only fit a very specific puzzle piece.)

 

Ninth grade, though – ninth grade’s a festival of _fireworks_ – an emotional rollercoaster of colors that spiral up Kara’s veins, starting the near instant she steps foot into the halls.

 

Those first few days grate at her nerves, a bit. Not really in a bad way, but it’s like Kara’s senses are fizzling out, brought on by some kind of overstimulation. Too many new people, she thinks, too much anxiety associated with starting high school. All emotions and characters fight to rule the colors sifting through her muscles until her fifth, and final, day of the school week. By the end of it, Kara’s spent, feeling fleshy and sensitive as she slinks into the passenger seat of Alex’s car.

 

Taking glasses by their frame with one hand, she presses the heel of the other into her temple, washing away a sea of shades with the pressure. There’s an unnatural buzz to Kara’s skin that she can’t know for certain if she’s felt before. Though, considering the look on Alex’s face as she shifts in her spot to face her, fingers hanging loosely onto the ten position of the steering wheel as she places another behind the head of Kara’s seat, she assumes it’s safe to say this is new.

 

This burnt out tenderness, different from the grey absence of color she’d experienced while mourning her parents. If that was darkness, the existence of something without visible light, this is _everything_. All wavelengths bending into a kaleidoscope of blinding, white illumination.

 

Kara can handle it until she can’t, the sensations closing over her throat like a threat of fingers, ears waterlogged, the ringing in them from a faraway place. Collapsing a little, she curls into herself, as if doing so will cause her to shrink within the confines of Alex’s hand-me-down vehicle, their school dissolving into the backdrop.

 

Hands cup the sides of Kara’s head, her glasses slipping out of the grip they’re in and landing somewhere below the dash. She’s leaning just so, back hunched as elbows rest onto either of her knees. It’s all too much. Even in the sanctity of Alex’s presence, Kara finds it hard to let the waves of whatever this is crash over her and subside.

 

Noise gradually comes through the static, the air not making her skin feel so sinewy anymore and the residual tingles far less heightened. However many minutes this takes, she doesn’t know, but the burn in her lungs says it lasted long enough.

 

Alex’s hand draws Kara back into reality with a flinch, harsh. It’s only a whisper of a touch pressed at the end of Kara’s scalp where her hair starts to be swept up in a ponytail, but it prickles at her flesh with so much heat she can’t _stand_ it.

 

The shaky breath Kara exhales, face scrunched underneath the tension and shoulders lifted in a cringe, is all the incentive Alex needs to pull back. She stays hovered, fingers dangling above Kara’s shoulder like she isn’t exactly sure where she went wrong.

(But she didn’t. Go wrong, Kara means. Sure, they hadn’t started out smooth – their feet rolling around on the gravel of new dynamic, fumbling as they’d tried to navigate through it – but Alex was a foundation Kara had come to depend on.

 

Alex hadn’t been too cool that she couldn’t show Kara around school her first day, Alex hadn’t let Kara blunder through the lunch room with Winn and James behind her, instead waving them all over to a table chock-full of her own friends. Alex hadn’t acted like she didn’t know her.

 

Alex hadn’t been anything Kara ever expected, but better. Always better.)

 

“Sorry,” Kara breathes, bringing a hand around to rub at her face and letting her eyelashes flutter against the inside of her palm for a moment. Alex doesn’t say anything back until Kara starts sitting up.

 

“Are you okay?” She asks.

 

The stab in Kara’s chest dulls at the question, Alex’s pleasant brown spilling over her shoulders in a way no color really had before. Kara doesn’t really have much time to mull it over – the odd, washed feeling that trickles across her skin – like a blanket settling over her form, all thick and warm, because Alex is looking at her. _Expectantly_.

 

She shakes her head, more so to rid herself of the new sensation than to give an answer. “It’s fine.”

 

“ _Kara_ –” Alex starts, but Kara stops her.

 

“It’s – _don’t worry_ , it’s – sometimes the colors are just… a lot.” This isn’t what Alex wants to hear, apparently, because confusion plucks at her eyebrows, drawing them in and making her sister lean a little more forward in her seat, squinting.

 

“The… colors?” She says, visibly trying to disguise her uncertainty.

 

That irks Kara, rustles at her bones uncomfortably until she’s fidgeting in her place and mimicking Alex’s tone, confused by her confusion. “Yes?”

 

“I don’t…” Alex must think better of what she’s about to say because her mouth’s clamped shut milliseconds after the words leave it. Straightening out her spine, she attempts to look surer in her words. “What do you mean?”

 

Kara sputters out a mirthless laugh, however shallow, quick as the oxygen hasn’t fully returned to her system. “ _What do I_ –”

 

She stops, trying to regain proper footing while retrieving her glasses from the floor, and though Kara’s still sort of shaky, she slips them back on with little clumsiness.

 

“The colors. You know how when you meet new people and they have their own shade?” Kara says, ignoring Alex’s strange look and continuing, “I guess I’m just sensitive, I think. No one else has seemed to have trouble adjusting so far.”

 

Alex doesn’t respond, for whatever reason, and Kara’s overcome with an inexplicable compulsion to fill the silence.

 

“I – I’ve been feeling them, too, lately. Only the past few days, but.” She pauses, uncertainty rushing through her arteries in a flash of white. It’s as though admitting it with actual words only spurs it further, the whiteness of Kara’s anxiety now prickling like pins and needles underneath the flesh of her palms. “They aren’t always – I – _I don’t know_ , pleasant?”

 

Even talking about it aloud now, since she hadn’t in years, leaves Kara feeling winded. It doesn’t help that Alex looks so perplexed, like it’s the only time she’s ever heard about this. Which, well. That doesn’t really make sense, does it?

 

( _The first instance being when Kara was around the age of five, a child budding into life with unfathomable energy and a toothy smile so sweet it could make even the most resilient adults wither at her feet._

_Her father had just went off to work, tucked his cap tight over his head and left his two favorite girls with a parting gift of sloppy cheek kisses, one for each._

_Alura dragged her hand over the backside of her daughter’s head, granting it an affectionate scratch before she’d let go to reach for the plate in front of Kara as she was bidding her husband goodbye, the dish now almost miserably sticky with syrup and absent of any waffles._

_There’d been no pancake breakfasts attempted since their last mishap. Talk about crash and burn. Literally._

_Kara had been in the middle of drawing her finger across the plate as her mother was tugging it out from under her, a grin tearing apart at the stern face she had attempted. Once it’s in the sink, Alura finally began her assault with tickling fingers, pointy and prodding Kara’s sides._

_She’d fell right into her mother’s trap in an instant, a flower being gently massacred by the tickle monster._

_Laughter tore apart Kara’s insides, had dissolved her into a pink-flushed mess with Alura’s arms around her and a smile pressed atop blonde hair._

_The moment had been like the color of a tangerine, this near indescribable bright orange and in Kara’s spent, childlike euphoria she’d spoke of it. Rushed, she giggled out about how the happiness by product of her mother’s love had looked. So wonderfully wide in the room they’d been in, not at all shy._

_Alura had drew Kara in closer, then, a kiss dropped onto her temple as she’d started rocking her gently._

_“You’re a walking miracle, my sweet girl,” Alura said._

_Kara had just beamed, content beneath her mother’s embrace.)_

 

“You really don’t know what I’m talking about?” Kara asks, voice quiet in the confines of Alex’s car.

 

Alex’s eyes look absolutely pained, but she still manages to shake her head, the frown marring her sister’s face unlike anything so sad she’d seen from her before. “Let’s get you home to mom, okay? I’m going to figure this out – _we’re_ going to, Kara.”

 

The only thing that comforts her as they drive away from school is, though it isn’t the first time, Alex had still said “mom” instead of “my mom”. Even that is a hollow warmth.

 

* * *

 

Through some well-timed texts at the stop lights they’d hit, Eliza’s notified vaguely of the current situation before they’re due to arrive back home.

 

As soon as the door’s open, Kara sees Eliza standing there in the foyer with her hands clasped delicately over her mouth. Her eyes are dry, sure, but Kara notices the worry in Eliza’s posture.

 

She and Alex step inside and it’s only mere seconds before her foster mom sheds the distance between them to gently envelop Kara in a hug. There’s a few moments where she herself remains unsure, though it fades with the certain way Eliza tugs her in closer.

 

There isn’t any tears, just the welling up of Kara’s eyes as she finally hugs Eliza back.

 

* * *

 

There isn’t anything really anything “wrong” with her, Jeremiah says.

 

They do all the mock up tests from home, Jeremiah peering into her eyes through a magnified lens, a stethoscope cold and pressed up against her sternum as he listens to Kara’s heart beating through it.

 

It seems a little silly at first, this big hoopla their making over her and Kara thinks she can tell it’s mostly for her own benefit. To reassure her somehow. They don’t seem worried at all, Eliza and Jeremiah, and Eliza’s initial franticness could be chalked up to seeing Kara in duress.

 

That makes her smile on the inside, at least – makes a homely feeling spread throughout her chest – and after they have their fussing, Alex watching leaned up against the wall nearby, Jeremiah sits down in the chair next to Kara, Eliza smiling gently over his shoulder.

 

“I want you to know there’s nothing to be worried about,” he starts, that honesty she’d heard in his voice on her first day here still there now, “You’re okay.”

 

Eliza’s nodding along as Jeremiah speaks, the hand not at her side sitting atop of her husband’s collar, like a delicate press at his pulse. Kara finds the gesture oddly comforting, despite it not being her who’s receiving the touch.

 

They just all seem like such a _family_ unit, right here and right now with Eliza and Jeremiah effortlessly, but no less intricately, woven together – with Alex monitoring over the situation like she wouldn’t dare leave them alone, not for a single moment and Kara sitting proud in her chair, so much less terrified than she was an hour ago – Kara’s heart feels as though it’s kind of on fire from all the love igniting around it.

 

* * *

 

As it turns out, there isn’t much they can do about Kara’s condition, if they could even call it that.

 

Synesthesia is relatively harmless, Kara learns. While she may experience it in a different way than normal, the temperature and texture sensations she’d been going through recently coinciding with the colors people make her see, more emotional than the grapheme variation, it doesn’t make her any less of an individual.

 

Jeremiah explains it to her with no small amount of fascination, and Kara feels a little small, at this. It’s a lot to take in – and though she supposes her foster father’s interest in her… _differentiation_ should be soothing – it isn’t, really.

 

It’s hard not to think she’s like an anomaly, not when Kara’s also trying to remind herself she’s still human, that this doesn’t suddenly mean she isn’t a person. Jeremiah is looking at it from an analytical point of view, attempting not to seem too eager and treat her as if she’s some scientific marvel, not just a teenager, fresh faced in high school.

 

Eliza seems more sympathetic, as if she isn’t also a dedicated woman of science and the exploration of life. Surely Kara’s _special_ brand of individuality is interesting to her too, right?

 

But Eliza – _Eliza_ , she doesn’t act like it’s anything more than a scrape on Kara’s knee – she’d peered on in concern, but once Kara had been given time to calm down and Jeremiah had eased the tension on all of their shoulders, she went back to smiling at Kara reassuringly. Never prodding where Jeremiah asked too much, always listening where Jeremiah was quick to start, covering Kara’s words with his own theories.

 

Kara doesn’t think she means any different than Jeremiah does by all of that, actually. They’re both doing what they think might make her feel better with the situation she’s been given. So while Jeremiah’s efforts were a little more misguided than Eliza’s, providing facts where she’d perhaps would’ve preferred soft reasurrances, it didn’t make them any less sincere.

 

They all go to bed that night spent.

 

Jeremiah’s the first to leave the kitchen, though not without dropping an achingly familiar kiss atop Kara’s head as they parts ways. It almost makes her want to cry, but she just smiles up at him instead. Pained, though not dishonest.

 

Now, Eliza’s resolve doesn’t last any longer than it takes for her to finish the dishes. She whispers something faint and resembling “goodnight” on her way out, only stopping to lock both she and Alex in a quick, three-way hug.

 

With that, she’s gone and Kara’s world feels lighter for a second. She loves them, she _really_ does, but her emotions were tender and being alone with Alex after hours of everything else feels. Feels very relaxing. _Good_.

 

The only color she can tell is radiating on her senses is Alex’s brown for the first time in weeks and Kara relishes in it. Fuzz buzzes at her insides and she’s warm, pliant in her family’s kitchen and under her sister’s gaze.

 

Alex grins at Kara, elbowing her side like she can already feel that Kara’s shedding the anxiety she’s been wearing as a coat. “You want to talk about it some more?”

 

Kara laughs. “No, no thank you – definitely, uh – definitely not for a little while.”

 

Alex deflates, relaxing and slinging her arm around Kara’s shoulder.

 

“ _Thank god_.”

 

* * *

 

Kara’s senses return to their regularly scheduled programming by the next week and ninth grade’s gears start turning again with minimal event.

 

Alex continues to let James and Winn be at her table with her friends during lunch, Kara always next to Alex as her other two schoolmates sit across from her.

 

They quickly find a way to cherish the monotony and Kara’s just grateful to feel somewhat normal, for right now. Given everything that’d happened to her not only last week, but over the course of half her life, she has no trouble discovering the happiness that comes with doing the same things day in and day out.

 

School is school – Kara’s at the mercy of her assignments, and James is caught up in student council, and Winn’s… well, _Winn_ , milling about a few clubs but never staying in one for too long – so everything just slowly clicks into place.

 

Kara’s comfort isn’t as short lived as it usually seems to be, either.

 

From the incident in Alex’s car to a little more than halfway through Kara’s sophomore year of high school, there isn’t anything so – not bad, necessarily, but – emotionally overwhelming that happens.

 

Nothing outside of the everyday, run of the mill teenage issue, at least.

 

(Winn’s crush on her isn’t the easiest thing to deal with. Especially with what she _doesn’t_ try to think about.

 

Like the wings fluttering in rib cage when she and James brush hands, the admiration that swells softly in her chest that she hasn’t yet been able to understand, hasn’t yet tried to.

 

It feels guilty, to even look at James the first few weeks after she finds out. Winn had confessed at her doorstep, stumbling through his words with a bouquet of flowers, slightly squashed, in his hands. She would’ve found Winn’s stutters a bit more endearing in a different setting, one where she wasn’t forced into a love triangle by the narrative her friend had been building in his head.

 

A love triangle that sometimes felt more like a “love _square_ ” by Alex’s standards, which she tells her one night.

 

_It was later than most high schoolers should be up, moonlight brushing onto the canvas of Kara’s notebook from the open window nearby, desk only further illuminated by the light coming from the screen of her laptop._

_She was lost in thought when Alex came in, also up herself, for whatever reason. Any other time Kara would’ve been grateful for the company, would’ve smiled over at her sister as she heard the door open – but then, her mind had been operating under a singular motive – and it’s probably minutes before she’d even realized Alex was in the room._

_“Earth to Kara,” Alex interrupted, knocking a knuckle on the book there a few times to get her attention._

_Kara floundered, if at least for a couple seconds. The stubby sound of surprise she gave Alex was enough to make her laugh, her sister crossing her arms at her and looking on curiously._

_“What’s got you up so late?” She asked, and Kara was half tempted to parrot the question back at her. But Alex hadn’t done much besides show up at the wrong time, so she forced herself to bite her tongue._

_“I’m just doing a little…” She paused, anxiously glancing at her laptop before closing the lid. “You know, research for –” Kara’s foot had found her mouth again, it seemed, “– Just for Lena.”_

_She had to suffer through the pain of Alex’s double take._

_“Say_ what _now?”_

 

_Even though it’s something Kara knew her sister hated, she couldn’t help but be prone to mumbling, then. Only a touch. “I said –” she sighed. “I was looking into something for Lena, okay?”_

_“You’ve talked to her?”_

_Kara looked down, fingers on the handle of her glasses, “No.”_

_“So this is just your extracurricular, then? Saving Luthor from her family’s mess?” Alex joked, but seemed to realize when seeing Kara’s frown that humor was currently ill-advised. “Right, sorry. I’ll hold onto those until later.”_

_“Or maybe forever?” Kara chirped, unable to stop the slight grin that tugged at her mouth._

_“Ass,” she’d commented, nudging into her sister’s side. “Why do you care so much, though? She hasn’t talked to you in years, her sibling’s psychotic and her parents aren’t far off. Who even knows about her own mental stability, or –”_

_It hadn’t been hard to tell what Alex had wanted to finish that sentence with, but anyone in a hundred mile radius knew better than to question Lena’s innocence in front of her._

_Alex shrugged her shoulders, then. “What’s so important about Lena Luthor?”_

Kara remembers even now how her heart had stopped, can phantom-feel it any instant she thinks about it.

_She laughed, so sharp Alex would’ve had to have strained to hear the humor in it. It’d have been too easy to breathe out an “everything” and reverently hold onto the word, curling it on her tongue and pressing it to the roof of her mouth like she was trying to save it there for life._

_It’d have been too easy, but it wouldn’t have done Lena justice._

_“She – she helped me,” Kara said. “She was helping me in a way no one else was, okay?”_

_She’d left some space for explanation, allowing the room to rest in silence as she tried to gather together the tendrils of her emotions. The lilac that edged into her vision was the color of unrest. Normally soft on the petals of flowers, it was then everything prickly, like going against the grain. Kara had seen as much as she’d felt her own unease, overwhelmed by it until Alex had shifted closer, her limbs then uncrossed and hands in her back pockets as though she was fighting the urge not to pull Kara into her arms._

_Kara had let out a breath then, slowly. “Sure, there was Eliza and Jeremiah,” she said. “Clark, yeah. And even –” her eyes find Alex’s. “Even you, eventually. But it wasn’t like you were_ all _giving me the same things_ all _the time.”_

_Alex nodded, sad, but didn’t say anything._

_“There was guidance, shoulders to cry on,” she stopped, glanced around unsurely before bringing her shoulders up and shaking her head. “No one was trying to just be my friend, though, you know? I was the tragedy, even in Clark’s eyes, but then I met Lena and…”_

_The moon seemed to be heavy outside her window. Kara sighed and returned Alex’s gaze again._

_“And then it was like, all of a sudden, I wasn’t.” She didn’t cry about it anymore. Mostly. “I was Kara the_ kid _, not Kara the_ Orphan _. She just – Lena isn’t my only friend anymore, no, but she’s still my first one – isn’t that supposed to mean something?”_

_Alex had looked winded. Resigned, even, and Kara subdued herself. Let the fight drain out of her bones because this was her sister, not her enemy._

_Then, she’d been smiling. Alex was smiling like she knew something Kara didn’t and it was terrifying, so sudden._

_Her sister’s amusement peeled at her until the grin on her face was slyer than a Cheshire’s._

_“What?” Kara asked, threading down to her wit’s end._

_Alex had just walked over to the door, stopped right before she was gone and tilted her head. “Between Winn, James and your… older developments, you’re kind of caught in a love square, you know that?”_

_The pillow Kara launched at Alex’s quickly retreating figure was only off its mark by an inch.)_

 

So, yeah, nothing tears up at Kara’s heart for a while, but it doesn’t stay that way. If “if something bad happens, something good will come of it” is true, it’s only logical that the theory works vice versa, too.

 

* * *

 

Midvale is by no means some sleepy town.

 

It isn’t very big, no, maybe even a little tired – stuck in its ways, a victim to routine – but it had a lot milling around under the surface.

 

How precariously cliché that was, too. A small town that had more going on than the outside world realized. And that’s the thing about clichés, though, isn’t it? People _love_ them, can’t seem to ever get their fill.

 

Kara hadn’t even noticed it at first, how most of the hands of the people in town were clenched at the base of its roots. How they held onto them so dearly that they never even looked up from their own fingers, never connected truly to the other places surrounding them.

 

It’s Midvale or bust for over half the population – which isn’t that large to begin with – and all the while Kara’s struggling to relate, the town’s unrest once more.

 

(There isn’t anything wrong with Midvale, not exactly. Kara would even go as far as calling it her home, but that’s a stretch she only makes for the people she’s met here.

 

Not just her family, not even just her friends at school, or Winn and James. But for almost everyone around her.

 

For Donny at the pastry shop she frequents on the weekends. For Miss Bernstein, the older woman that feeds nearly every bird in the park with bread and the like whenever she gets a paycheck. For the people Kara doesn’t know, too, but still sees on her way home from school or while she’s coming back from a walk to the beach.

 

The atmosphere they’d provided was her home, the location didn’t really matter.)

 

There’d only ever been one thing that’d rustled Midvale. That’d made other people look closer at the small town with an even smaller name to go with it, that’d tore the population’s roots and privacies from their very hands.

 

People loved the cliché, but they didn’t so much love it being taken from them. Sudden and ripped to shreds, their ideal had been gone. The heat turned on and the cameras pointed right there, at their lives.

 

Any place, no matter the size, would stop being able to keep up it’s secrecy under the media’s microscope.

 

The Luthors were the only thing to ever really rob Midvale of its cliché, to stop making it seem as “sleepy” as it did, so it only makes sense that they’re the ones to do it again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorRy lena wasn't really in this chapter but things actually finally get rolling in the next one and it feels a lot less like exposition.
> 
> honestly i'm only sorta planning any of this but there is an arc i'm working to so stay tuned, kids. the importance of lex's actions are less about what he actually did and more about how it effects kara/lena's dynamic. this is both because fucc lex, idc about him being in my narrative and also because i don't feel like over explaining his crazy ass. expect me to be permanently be vague about it is what i'm saying. 
> 
> i'm still @reyhollis if you feel like being gay af with me.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm slow but my personal is @reyhollis so hit a bitch up


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